San Diego Gas & Electric's installed its one-millionth smart meter in Paradise Hills on Monday. The company is installing the wireless meters throughout San Diego Country and says that these meters will eliminate the need for a company employee to go door to door for reading meters. However, not everyone is happy about SDG&E’s plan of installing smart meters in place of older meters. According to Caroline Winn of SDG&E, "The problem that we had was the software was not communicating properly to the software within the meters, but we're confident we fixed that problem."
The Utility Consumer Action Network (UCAN) likes the idea of energy users being able to view and, as a result, control the amount of electricity or gas they are consuming through a website; however, the agency also mentioned that users are getting a higher monthly bill compared to what they got before the meters were installed. "We want to make sure those increases aren't from some funny business with the meters," stated Joshua Anaya with UCAN.
According to SDG&E, a lot of the old spinning dial meters simply did not provide accurate reading anymore and that the new smart meters give an accurate reflection of what customers are using.
UCAN said that it cannot compare accuracy rates of the two meters, as the old meters are recycled. The method of comparing is to check utility bills six months before the old meters were removed and six months after the smart meters are installed.
According to SDG&E, it is trying its best to be proactive with users who believe that there is problem with their utility bills. San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) is a regulated public utility that supplies power to 1.4 million business and residential customers spread across a 4,100 square-mile service area that includes two counties and 25 communities. It has more than 5,000 employees throughout its service area.
The Utility Consumers' Action Network, UCAN was founded in 1983 by San Diego citizens for protecting consumers from utility and corporate abuse. Over the years, the not-for-profit legal team of UCAN has saved San Diego consumers billions in unfair utility rate hikes. Today, UCAN performs the tasks of bringing legal actions, educating, advocating policy initiatives, and guarding against corporate abuses in industries, such as energy, gasoline, landline and wireless phone. UCAN.org is the most visited website among consumer organization websites of its kind on the web.
According to SDG&E, a lot of the old spinning dial meters simply did not provide accurate reading anymore and that the new smart meters give an accurate reflection of what customers are using.
UCAN said that it cannot compare accuracy rates of the two meters, as the old meters are recycled. The method of comparing is to check utility bills six months before the old meters were removed and six months after the smart meters are installed.
According to SDG&E, it is trying its best to be proactive with users who believe that there is problem with their utility bills. San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) is a regulated public utility that supplies power to 1.4 million business and residential customers spread across a 4,100 square-mile service area that includes two counties and 25 communities. It has more than 5,000 employees throughout its service area.
The Utility Consumers' Action Network, UCAN was founded in 1983 by San Diego citizens for protecting consumers from utility and corporate abuse. Over the years, the not-for-profit legal team of UCAN has saved San Diego consumers billions in unfair utility rate hikes. Today, UCAN performs the tasks of bringing legal actions, educating, advocating policy initiatives, and guarding against corporate abuses in industries, such as energy, gasoline, landline and wireless phone. UCAN.org is the most visited website among consumer organization websites of its kind on the web.
